[espitia]

What currency is not being used in the drug market?

I would love to have a rational debate and hear objective arguments agaisnt bitcoin vs gold that can be applied uniquely to bitcoin or rather that dont apply to both.

Scarcity? No intrinsic value? Speculative? Thefts? Used in illicit ways?

All these apply to both gold and bitcoin.

"Gold has been historically valuable to humans". So have many other rocks, flowers, spices, etc.

I am geniuenly interested in seeing why Bitcoin should fail as being a store of value.

[taywrobel]

> I am geniuenly interested in seeing why Bitcoin should fail as being a store of value.

Oh, it's a great store of value. But that doesn't make it a good currency. Currencies aren't intended to store value, they're intended to facilitate the transfer of value. Assets (be it physical such as property, governmental such as bonds, or corporate such as stocks) are what is intended to store value.

In general, you want a currency to suffer from inflation and decrease in value over time. While this may seem counter-intuitive to having a healthy currency, it's the best thing for the economy, as it encourages the currency to continually be in circulation, and whatever cannot be readily spent to be invested into assets or placed into a bank, which then goes and loans it out to others who need it, stimulating the economy.

Gold has never been easy to use as currency. It needs to be weighed, and now its value is so high that in order to buy everyday items, you'd be dealing in almost immeasurably small slivers of gold. So instead people used it as an asset; They would buy it speculatively and watch the price rise as scarcity increased. As more people bought it, the scarcity increased even more quickly, leading to effectively a deflationary spiral.

What do you think will happen as we get closer to the 21 million Bitcoin limit? It'll be the same deal. Everyone will hold onto their BTC because it's scarce, and increased scarcity increases value, and before long, the entire BTC economy grinds to a halt.

"But this has never happened with gold!" I hear you say. Let me point you to the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, where the government basically said "Naw, dawgs, give us that gold back. We gotta get this economy moving again.", and made most private possession of gold illegal, in order to help get America out of the great depression.

Bitcoin is an amazingly cool concept. Bitcoin is an awesome work of technology. Bitcoin is not a currency.

[nosuchthing]

  BTC because it's scarce

BTC isn't really scarce, there's quiet a few newer iterations like Litecoin, Monereo, Ethereum, Dogecoin etc..

It's also worth noting the supply was minted mainly by miners doing very low difficulty work early on, using basic home computers.

Satoshi made an intensional design choice to gain control of the supply for a very low cost, exploiting late adopters as bag holders.

The incentive system for bitcoin mining might of anticipated gaining popularity as time passes and increasing the reward as the network grows, but the system was designed completely opposite of that, at the expense of the masses for the benefit of sending the supply to the mining nodes operating in the first few months.

https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/media_files/total_...

[espitia]

Ditto. Maybe you read my comment wrong but I am arguing for a store of value - not a currency. And I am asking why it should fail as a store of value because I don't see how gold has any advantage over it.

[taywrobel]

Sorry, I guess I conflated it with your initial statement of "What currency is not being used in the drug market?".

The first difference to come to mind is that if you forget the password to your gold, the gold still exists. If you forget the password to your wallet, your bitcoin is pretty much unsalvageable. And assets that are so easy to destroy aren't particularly stable. And yes, most wallets have all sorts of backup capabilities and safety features, but in the end it's used by humans and humans are stupid [citation needed].

[spiorf]

Being your own bank comes with some responsibility.

Gold can be stolen, gold can be lost. You can hide your gold in the woods, and forget the location.

Also paper money can rot and can burn.

If i memorize my bitcoin seed, my brain is in fact my bank, and if I trust some external entity more than my own brain, bitcoin is not for me.

[Fjolsvith]

There will rise a profession where they forensically reconstruct lost wallets to recover those assets.

[meri_dian]

How are you going to anonymously trade gold online? Bitcoin gives the anonymity that criminals need.

[espitia]

Gold mines are connected to genocide, funding wars and illegal trade.

Is my logic wrong in pointing out a 'flaw' in gold when someone else points out a 'flaw' in bitcoin?

I think criminals will use any tool in ways that they were not meant to be used. This does not make the tool/subject at hand the culprit.

[patrickg_zill]

The Federal Reserve is connected to genocide, funding wars, and illegal trade. So what is your point?

[espitia]

That pointing out an 'issue' that is common in gold/fiat/crytpo is not a great argument against crypto.

[colejohnson66]

So does cash. Should we ban paper money too?

[d4l3k]

That appears to be the route India is taking.

[dingo_bat]

Wow what bullshit. India invalidated a set of currency notes and immediately replaced it with new ones. Is that "banning paper money"? If a government mandates that all petrol cars must be replaced with electric by 2025, does that mean they have "banned cars"?